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Updated: May 14, 2025
I led her forward slowly, so that the flapping of the oilskins against the stair-rail would not be heard. The steady patter of rain on the deck planks drowned what little noise we made, and as we emerged into the hood a gust of wind drove the moisture into our faces. I could feel my heart thump, yet it was more because of her proximity than any excitement of adventure.
If it's true that he was never in Paris before and that another Jansoulet did all they accuse him of, why didn't he say so?" The old mother turned very pale and clung to the stair-rail. She had understood.
He noticed, too, that his arm holding the stair-rail trembled in a silly way, whereas he was perfectly calm. Precisely as he reached the street-door the manager raised the knocker; but the latch clicked and the wicket was drawn slightly ajar. Inside could just be descried Madame John.
The walls of smooth stone offered not the least appearance of decay or dampness; the stair-rail of wrought iron presented no traces of rust; it was inserted, just above the bottom step, into a column of gray granite, which sustained a statue of black marble, representing a negro bearing a flambeau. This statue had a strange countenance, the pupils of the eyes being made of white marble.
The next instant a hand met mine on the stair-rail. Some one brushed past me, and I screamed. Then I must have fainted." That was Louise's story. There could be no doubt of its truth, and the thing that made it inexpressibly awful to me was that the poor girl had crept down to answer the summons of a brother who would never need her kindly offices again.
Removed scarce a yard from me as he was, I could hear Nayland Smith's soft, staccato breathing; but my eyes were all for the darkened hallway, for the smudgy outline of the stair-rail with the faint patterning in the background which, alone, indicated the wall.
I began to think Miss Hardy was mistaken, but now you've seen him also." "An' Murphy," broke in the horrified corporal, edging closer. "Murphy saw him too. Bedad, maybe it was a ghost!" "Ghosts don't talk, and I never heard of any wearing revolvers. Major, when did you see Billie last?" I noticed how haggard his face was, and he answered slowly, his hands grasping the stair-rail.
"I dare say I am," she answered. How poorly she held her own in a quarrel! It was always so with her. Why could she not be careful of her words, and answer so as to wound him, crush him altogether? He stood with one hand on the stair-rail and said: "So you think it pleases me to have things going on like this? I tell you it hurts me desperately has done for a long time past."
Guy had brought himself to name the horrid thing, and the very sound of the word served to make it more real and clear to his mind, and there were great drops of sweat upon his forehead and about his mouth as he asked what it meant. "Oh, Guy, don't feel so badly. Tell him, father, I did not do it," Daisy cried, as she stood leaning over the stair-rail and looking down at the wretched man.
"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on. I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it.
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